Bill Snyder will return to the sidelines at Kansas State after three years of retirement. The Wildcats won 17 games in those three seasons after winning 136 games in Snyder's 17 seasons during his first tenure as head coach.

'THEY WERE VERY SOUND'

No matter that Tom Osborne never lost to a Kansas State team coached by Bill Snyder. Or anybody else, for that matter.

"He's got probably the best chance of anybody they could have there," says the Nebraska icon, who similarly was called out of retirement during a time of distress to become the Cornhuskers' athletics director almost two years ago.

"When you went against a team that was coached by Bill, you weren't going to find any obvious gaps -- things that were unattended to, a pass they couldn't cover or a gap in the running game where they just didn't seem to have any way to defend you," he recalls. "They were very sound."

In his quarter-century as Nebraska's football coach, Osborne was 9-0 against Snyder and the Wildcats. K-State evolved into a threat in the Big 12 North, however, losing only to the Huskers en route to an overall 11-1 finish in 1997 -- Osborne's last season on the Nebraska sideline.

Osborne, too, had an opportunity to get back into coaching. Michigan State came calling not long after he retired, and "I was tempted a lot," he says. "But my grandson called me, and he was crying and said, 'I don't want you to leave Nebraska.' And I couldn't really see myself coaching somewhere else anyway."

Houston later approached him without success. Osborne went on to serve three terms as a U.S. congressman from Nebraska, failed in a bid to become governor and was available when the university asked him to take over as AD in October 2007.

Bill Snyder takes part in a public service announcement with Kansas Highway Patrol officer Mike Paynter during the warmup to Snyder's return to the sidelines.

HARD TO STAY OFF SIDELINES

Bill Snyder isn't the first college football coach to step back into the job in which he made, or began making, his reputation. Some others:

Chris Ault. Stepped down and returned twice during his tenure at Nevada, each time to focus on his (now-relinquished) second role as athletics director. This season is his 24th as Wolf Pack coach.

Dennis Erickson. Started at Idaho, returned more than two decades later for a 4-8 season, then jumped to his current job at Arizona State.

John Robinson. Averaged better than 9½ wins and won a national title in seven initial seasons at Southern California, went to NFL's Los Angeles Rams for nine years, then returned to USC for five less-successful seasons and finished up at UNLV.

Johnny Majors. Won the 1976 national title at Pittsburgh, went to alma mater Tennessee for 16 years, and returned to Pitt for four final seasons in which the Panthers struggled to 3, 3, 2 and 4 wins.

Gen. Robert Neyland. Retired U.S. Army brigadier twice interrupted his 21-year, Hall of Fame career at Tennessee to serve in the Army.

Eddie Anderson. Hall of Famer was 47-7-4 in six years at Holy Cross in the 1930s, moved on to Iowa (where he interrupted his eight-year tenure to serve in the Army Medical Corps), then returned to Holy Cross for 13 seasons.

Bill Roper. Turned in unbeaten marks in each of his three stints at Princeton, the first in 1906 en route to the Hall of Fame.

Bill Snyder was getting into his late 60s, yes. His white hair had thinned. Family tugged at him. But no way did he look to his son like a man who was ready — truly ready — to step away from a sport and a profession to which he'd given more than four decades of his life, to go from 16- and 17-hours-a-day immersion in football to chasing a clutch of grandkids from peewee game to peewee game.

"There was an intense, I'm-not-sure-this-is-the-right-time-or-not look just something I read in his eyes and body language," Sean says, recalling the announcement four Novembers ago. "He felt it probably needed to happen at that point, but I don't think he was convinced.

"It's a part of his life. That's just kind of the way it is."

And so, the coach who begot one of the most astonishing turnarounds in sports history, who lifted Kansas State from perpetual laughingstock to college football heavyweight, is back with the Wildcats. If his retirement hadn't entirely agreed with him, it also hadn't with them. They were losing again. Off the field, trouble was brewing.

Snyder embarks on his 18th season at Kansas State — and first since 2005 — with the start of practice Aug. 5. Next week, he'll address his return and his team's prospects at the Big 12 Conference's annual season preview in Dallas.

Coming off a 5-7 season and next-to-last-place finish in the Big 12's North Division, still searching for a quarterback and answers for one of the nation's worst defenses, immediate expectations are modest. Snyder was away while spread offenses proliferated and the Big 12 evolved, growing deeper and far stronger than it was when he and the Wildcats were mounting an ascent that included four weeks at No. 1 in the USA TODAY Coaches' Poll in 1998. Can he steer them back? If so, how quickly?

"There were similar questions when I came here 20 years ago. Where can you go, and how long can it take you to get there?" Snyder says. "My answer was exactly the same: I have no clue. We just need to find ways to get ourselves a little bit better every single day."

For the moment, his return is lift enough for many K-State supporters. It has been a painful past 10 months, from the football program's 2-6 spiral under Ron Prince last October and November to Prince's firing less than three full seasons into his tenure to the embarrassment and outrage over revelations of questionable financial dealings by athletics and other university officials — including the secret provision of $3.2 million in deferred compensation to Prince by former athletics director Bob Krause.

New AD John Currie is hoping to turn football's Sept. 5 opener vs. Massachusetts into a 50,000-person pep rally, inviting former players back to what now is called Bill Snyder Family Stadium and offering some inventive discounts on tickets: $9 each for 1,989 general admission seats, matching their cost in the first season of Snyder's opening act.

"With a brand new athletics director, a brand new president (Kirk Schultz, who succeeded the retired Jon Wefald) and the different stuff that has happened over the last several months — kind of a wounded pride, so to speak, for K-State fans — we look at that home opener as almost a family reunion day," Currie says.

Front and center will be their patriarch. "Coach Snyder back on the sideline, I think that will be a very cathartic, healing moment," Currie predicts.

'It was uncomforting to me'

Snyder's place in college football history, and seemingly in the Hall of Fame, is secure. Kansas State was beyond woeful, going winless — with a single tie — in 27 games before his arrival. In 54 previous years, the Wildcats had 137 wins.

In Snyder's 17 seasons, they won 136.

They played in 11 consecutive bowls, had six Top 10 finishes in the polls, won four Big 12 North titles and the league's 2003 championship.

Snyder, who turns 70 in October, kept an office in Kansas State's football complex during his three-year retirement, using it occasionally to catch up on calls, letters and other paperwork. He threw himself into statewide mentoring and leadership programs, and got into the active lives of his eight grandchildren.

He also missed no more than a couple of Kansas State football games, home and away, in that time, he says.

"I probably didn't see half of any ballgame with all the dialogue and the grandchildren running around everything. It was just kind of social experience," Snyder says. "Somebody would say something happened, and I'd say, 'I didn't see that.' I wasn't trying to be a coach in the stands, and I didn't have any impressions that 'this is good' and 'this isn't good.'."

Much wasn't good. The Wildcats had slipped to 4-7 and 5-6 in Snyder's last two seasons, and Prince provided only a brief bounce. They were 7-6 and played in the Texas Bowl in his first season, then sank to consecutive five-win seasons. In four of their six Big 12 losses a year ago, the defense surrendered an average of 56 points.

A fan base that swelled in size and fervor in Snyder's time grew restless. Average home attendance dipped last season to a 10-year low of 45,190 in a stadium that has a listed capacity of 51,000.

"The reason I came back," Snyder says, "is that, for whatever reason, there was just an unrest among people who had been really significant in my 20 years at Kansas State. It was uncomforting to me."

While certain he also had a coaching itch to scratch, son Sean says, "If things hadn't fallen the way they did here. I don't think he would have gotten back in. Over three years, I think it got to the point where he could accept retirement.. .. I don't want to say it was the perfect storm, but it all led to the right place at the right time."

Snyder had to convince himself, he says, that he could pour as much into the job at 69 as he had in his first go-round, which started at 49. Given his well-known extremes — the absurdly long hours, single daily meals, minimal sleep — that's a heavier consideration than for most.

He concluded he was up to it, and this summer kept a 12- to 14-hour daily schedule. Get into the season, and he says the average will hit 16 and 17 again.

Sean Snyder, an All-America punter under his dad in the early '90s and later and now again his director of football operations, chuckles as he recalls his dad ordering him to unbox all his old playbooks and staff manuals — days before his rehiring was announced in November. "He hit the ground running fast," Sean says.

"This is one of his true happinesses. I'm not sure he can be worn out right now."

'It's kind of a crossroads'

Snyder inherits a team that must replace quarterback Josh Freeman, the 17th overall pick in the NFL's April draft, three linemen and two other starters on offense. Eight starters are back on a defense that was the nation's third-worst, yielding 479 yards a game — nearly 120 more than Kansas State allowed under Snyder in 2005.

That first time through, Snyder shored up the roster with junior college talent and made K-State's non-conference schedule unthreatening and confidence-boosting. He also sweated every on-field detail. His teams were disciplined. They played unrelentingly hard. They were tough.

"A lot of guys came to us," says 6-6 offensive tackle Nick Stringer, a fifth-year senior from Topeka, Kan., who's one of a handful of players left from the first Snyder era. "They'd heard stories about practices and workouts and how hard he used to work and the things we used to. They asked us if it was true, and we were like, 'Yeah, but it pays off.'."

Take the simple 40-yard sprint. "You run 42 yards through the line, not running 39 and coasting the last one. Stuff like that," Stringer says. "That's when you get better, when you're going as hard as you can in every rep in everything you're doing."

Snyder and his representatives are in the process of finalizing a five-year, rollover contract that may offer no real insight into how long he'll give this second act. "The bottom line is it just kind of depends on when we can get it to where it needs to be. .. put the program in a position where it has a strong foundation and there can be a smooth, seamless transition," he says.

More clear are the stakes.

Losing was one blow to the program and school. The financial shenanigans that came to light this spring and summer — payments to companies owned by current and former K-State officials and a $500,000 loan to former AD Tim Weiser, plus the covert, $3 million-plus nest egg for Prince that the school is trying to have invalidated — are another.

Snyder's name came up amid the mess in June, which angered him. An audit pointed to 13 undocumented payments totaling $845,000 to Krause, Weiser and Snyder. And though the iconic coach was adamant that he never received a penny beyond the public terms of his contract, and Currie and the new president backed him, Snyder says, "It's the old adage: You can't unring the bell. The innuendo is there. The way it was presented, it just leaves questions.

"It's painful for me." he says, "because it's also painful for my family. I've got five children and eight grandchildren. They've been proud of my involvement (with Kansas State), and I want them to continue to be exactly that."

Mad, too, are folks such as Terry Kershner, a K-State graduate and Manhattan financial adviser who has held football season tickets since 1971 and is a longtime member and former officer in the school's expansive booster organization, the Catbackers.

"From my perspective," he says, "there are some things that weren't legal going on, and I hope it all comes out in the wash and we find out what the real motivation behind all this money-spending was.

"It's a critical time. If we get the football program righted again, that always generates enthusiasm for the university. Things will be good. If it goes flat, we're in trouble.. .. A new president, a new athletics director, it's kind of a crossroads."

Stressed, too, by the economy, Kansas State's $42 million athletic budget probably will show a more than $2 million deficit this year, Currie says. Donations are down. Plans for a new basketball practice facility and renovations to the football stadium are on hold.

Snyder is the balm the school can apply to the wounds.

He wasn't Currie's hire, but Currie calls his return to coaching "a blessing." The new AD officially took over June 15 and gained an immediate appreciation for the Snyder effect during a two-week stretch of Catbackers club appearances that month. "It's not hero worship. It's just reverence. And an appreciation, especially for folks who remember what it was like before 1989," Currie says.

"At the end of the day, this is not a guy who says 'Hey, we're going to do something' and it's never been done before. This is a guy who says 'We're going to do something,' and he's already proven he can do it in the most adverse of circumstances."

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